On Bone Bridge

by Maria Hoey

  Poolbeg

  Also by MaRIA HOEY

  The Last Lost Girl

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2018 by Crimson

  an imprint of Poolbeg Press Ltd

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  www.poolbeg.com

  © Maria Hoey 2018

  Copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-78199-8267

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  @PoolbegBooks

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  About the author

  Maria Hoey has been writing since she was eight years old. Her poetry has appeared in Ireland’s foremost poetry publication, Poetry Ireland, and her poems and short stories have also appeared in various magazines. In 1999, Maria won first prize in the Swords Festival Short Story Competition. In 2010, she was runner-up in the Mslexia International Short Story Competition and was also shortlisted for the Michael McLaverty Short Story Award. Her debut novel, The Last Lost Girl, was published in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Annie McHale Debut Novel Award 2017 and the Kate O’Brien Award 2018.

  Maria was raised in Swords, County Dublin, and has one daughter, Rebecca. She lives in Portmarnock with her husband Dr Garrett O’Boyle.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, my thanks to all the lovely people at Poolbeg, in particular Paula Campbell and my superb editor, Gaye Shortland. My gratitude and love to all my family, especially my mother Mary and my father Noel who long ago taught me a love of books. My thanks also to my extended family, old neighbours, and friends, all of whom have cheered me on to finish this, my second book.

  And again, my thanks and indebtedness to my early readers: my daughter Rebecca D’Arcy, my husband Dr Garrett O’Boyle and my sister Caroline Hoey-Edwards.

  For Garrett who encouraged, endured and believed

  Prologue

  Something bad happened on Bone Bridge when we were ten years old, me and Violet-May Duff. It wasn’t our fault. All we did was to go for a walk. Rosemary-June came too, and of course the little boy. What happened was an accident and nobody was to blame – that was what they told us then, that is what I have always told myself. Just a terrible accident and it is best not to think about it, certainly not to dwell on it. Best to forget ... but easier said than done, when what happened that day changed our lives forever, me and Violet-May Duff and Rosemary-June, and of course the little boy.

  Book 1

  Chapter 1

  Every story has to start somewhere, and it is not always at the beginning. Besides, who can say for sure where any particular story really begins? For me, this story began on Friday the 16th September 1983, although ask the others who were a part of it and I imagine they would say it began at quite another time. And so it did, for them. I only remember the date so precisely because it was exactly one week and one day to Violet-May Duff’s tenth birthday, which also happened to be mine. At the time it seemed like more than a coincidence that we should not just share a birthday but be exactly the same age too; it seemed to me like a sign. Because in the ordinary course of things Violet-May Duff and I might never have met; she was one of the beautiful people. Despite being the same age, she started school a year behind me, on account of some kidney problem, which forever afterwards her mother would refer to as Violet-May’s “weakness”. As a result, she was forbidden to sit on the grass, walls, rocks, damp sand, park benches or even garden furniture without a cushion. She was also, from the first of September until the last day of May, forced to wear wool tights instead of the white knee-socks she loved. The year she turned nine, Violet-May was allowed to join her own age-group in my class. But even then, that whole year, she did not speak to me once. It was not that she was rude to me or ignored me, rather that I was simply of no interest to her one way or another. But all that changed that September afternoon.

  As part of our homework earlier that week, we had been asked to write a composition on “The Most Exciting Day of My Life”. I wrote about the day I ran away from home even though I had never run away from home nor had any desire to do so. But a great many of the children in the books I read had done so and I thoroughly enjoyed unleashing my imagination on the subject. I was asked to read my story to the class and our teacher praised it and told me I was a fine writer with a vivid imagination. As I sat back down, the bell for home-time began to ring, but while all about me girls were on their feet stuffing books into bags and rushing for the door I stayed where I was, basking quietly in the glow of my teacher’s praise.

  It was then that Violet-May came and stood before my desk. She smiled at me and said, “I liked your composition.”

  I am not sure if I answered her. I think it much more likely I only stared at her in silent surprise. Violet-May Duff was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. She had beautiful starry brown eyes – in fact, everything about her, from the top of her silky brown curls to the toes of her black patent shoes seemed shiny and perfect to me. If I could I would have swapped everything about myself to look as she did, especially my straight brown hair and my grey eyes. And now, this object of my admiration was talking to me and smiling at me and standing close enough for me to see each gleaming bead of her little blue necklace.

  If Violet-May thought my silence odd or stupid or rude she showed no sign.

  “Do you want to come to my birthday concert?” she said. “There’s going to be a play and a party afterwards with an ice-cream cake and a soda-stream.”

  Again, I am not sure exactly what I said. “Yes, please,” perhaps or I may have only nodded. I had a bad habit of nodding then, which my mother was constantly trying to correct.

  “Good,” said Violet-May. “And you could help me with the play too, if you like.”

  She made it, I remember, sound like an honour was being conferred on me. Even so I felt the need to admit somewhat worriedly that I had never written a play before, only stories and compositions.

  Violet-May said that didn’t matter. “It’s the same thing,” she said, “except that in a play the people say the words on a stage. My brother is going to make a stage for me.”

  I was happy again then and accepted the honour of being asked to help. “When is your birthday?” I asked.

  When she told me the date I could not hide my delight, “That’s my birthday too,” I said.

  Violet-May frowned. “Is it?” But almost at once she was smiling again. “That’s nice,” she said.

  But I knew instinctively that she was not pleased and I suspected then what I now know to be true: Violet-May did not like to share.

  My mother did not try to hide her surprise when I told her about the invitation.

  “What’s the Duff girl doing inviting you to her birthday party? I didn’t know you were friends with her?”

  “I�
�m not – I mean I wasn’t. But she invited me and it’s not a birthday party, it’s a birthday concert.”

  “But it’s your birthday that day too,” said my mother. “Why would you want to go to someone else’s party, or concert or whatever it is? Would you not rather have your own day, your own party?”

  “No. I want to go to Violet-May’s. Please can I go?”

  “If you want,” said my mother, “but it wouldn’t be my idea of fun. That little one looks every bit as stuck-up as her mother.”

  It was quite true that Mrs Duff was stuck-up. She quite literally held her head high and her chin up and all the children laughed at her behind her back, not only because of the things she said but the way she said them. Mrs Duff didn’t have clothes, she had “costumes”. She talked about her home as “our little country hideaway” and once, at the school’s sale-of-work I had heard her say, “My children are my raison d’etre”. I heard it as “raisin detra” and thought it was some kind of cake, that Mrs Duff meant she wanted to eat her children. I asked my father but my mother interrupted, saying, “It’s French for up yourself.”

  And then there were the double-barrelled names she had given her girls, Violet-May and Rosemary-June. The boys made fun of them all the time. I had been known to join in too, but more, I must confess, out of envy than spite. Kay has never seemed to me a satisfactory name – it has no sooner begun than it is over. Long before I became friends with Violet-May, I had made numerous attempts to change it. I would come across a name I liked the sound of, mostly from the books I read or from the television, try it on in secret first to see if it was a good fit and then announce to my parents, “From now on I want to be known as …” Courtesy of Enid Blyton, I had trifled with Darrell, Alicia, Gwendoline, Isabel and Georgina (answering only to George). I had also tried on Diana, Ruby, Heidi and Clara and, from the television, Christina, Cassandra, Marina, Miranda, Gloria, Dolores, Tiffany and Cleopatra. My father who indulged me in almost all things played along, but my mother would have none of it and refused to call me anything but Kay.

  “But Cleopatra is so pretty,” I remember wheedling, “and Kay Kelly is so boring, and so plain.”

  To which my mother replied, “It’s quite pretty enough for you.”

  My mother had, I know without a doubt, a profound but unsentimental love for me. She took pride in my doings and sayings – she just rarely said so in my hearing. Her constant worry about me expressed itself almost as annoyance so that it often seemed to me that she blamed me if I got hurt or was sick. Even when I fell and hurt my knees, she would chide me, “How did you fall? Were you running again? What did I tell you about running?”

  And then she would fuss and clean my scrapes and cuts, and her hands were deft and gentle while her face was creased with crossness.

  But meanwhile the Duff girls had two first names as well as a middle name, which when they made their Confirmations meant they would have four names each. It just didn’t seem fair.

  But there was more to it than fancy names and fancy talk. Mrs Duff’s ability to put people’s backs up had its roots in the past and even as a child I was aware there was a story about Flora Duff, or Florence Flynn as some people insisted on calling her. I had sometimes overheard snippets of conversations between my mother and Mrs Nugent when she came in from next door for a cup of tea and a chat. Gossip was the breath of life to Mrs Nugent. As soon as my mother realised I was about, she would change the subject but even so I had strung together enough to work out that Florence Flynn had met Robert Duff while on loan from the home for unmarried mothers to scrub the Duffs’ floors. Robert Duff had fallen for Florence much to the horror of old Mrs Duff, who I assumed was Robert Duff’s mother and, according to Mrs Nugent, a controlling and domineering woman. Old Mrs Duff considered that an unmarried mother and skivvy was nowhere near good enough for her only son and threatened to leave the house forever if Robert went ahead and married one. I had no idea what a skivvy was – however, I gathered that skivvy or not Robert Duff had married Florence Flynn and Mrs Duff was as good as her word and went to live with her sister. How people knew all these things intrigued me, but there was apparently a somebody who claimed to know another somebody who did know and who was only too willing to help fill in the blanks. I also knew that there was more to the story of Florence Flynn but this I had yet to find out.

  “Violet-May wants me to go over to her house tomorrow to help with stuff,” I told my mother. “Is it alright if I go?”

  “What sort of stuff? I hope you won’t let her have you doing the dirty work. You’re not her slave, you know.”

  “No, it’s just writing stuff,” I said. “Part of the concert is to be a play and I’m helping Violet-May with that. She has ideas and everything – she just wants me to help her.”

  “Well, alright,” said my mother, “go if you want to, but I smell a rat.”

  Chapter 2

  As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with my mother’s nose.

  The following morning, in spite of it being a Saturday, I was up before I was called and by the time my mother put her head around my bedroom door I was already dressed and had my pencil case and a rolled-up fresh copybook stuffed inside my white shoulder bag. My mother insisted I eat some breakfast even though I was almost too excited to swallow and afterwards she came to the door and watched me over the top of the hedge until I reached the corner of our road and she could see me no longer. I believe now that she was anxious although there seemed no logical reason why she should have been. Violet-May’s home was a five-minute walk down the road. But perhaps it was that, like me, she understood that I was venturing into a different world that day.

  The Council had built our estate on a stretch of wasteland on the crest of a hill that overlooked the river valley and justifiably, which I find is not often the case in such matters, named it River View. The estate fronted onto a road known locally as Old Road which, narrow and hemmed in by trees and bushes, led in a circuitous route to the town. As it was not the main route, however, traffic was fairly light and so the road was generally considered safe enough, in those days anyway, for many of the children from River View to treat it as an extension of the estate. We walked up and down it on a daily basis, unaccompanied by adults, and it was along this road I walked that September Saturday morning, on my way to Violet-May’s home.

  The Duff house was invisible from the road, surrounded by a high stone wall – even the wrought-iron gates were set back from the road itself. I had walked past the gates many times and had even, when dared to do so by my playmates, ventured beyond them once or twice. I had never dared to go any further than the bend in the treelined avenue but today I passed through the gateway proudly, an invited guest carrying my head high, my bag swinging from my shoulder. The leaves of the beech trees had already turned to gold and the sunlight made them blaze, so that it seemed to me that I trod a magic pathway.

  The canopy of trees ended, giving way on one side to a high bank of large flowerless shrubs with leathery-looking dark-green leaves. I remember thinking that I did not much like the look of them. Then I rounded a curve and the driveway opened up and split in two, curving around a circle of lawn. The bank of dark plants continued on my right all the way up to one side of the house and beyond.

  I remember standing for a moment to gaze at Violet-May’s home. To me that day, it looked like a mansion; in reality it was a very elegant granite Georgian house.

  After a while I became aware of a dog barking somewhere and then my gaze shifted to the figure of a woman who was on her knees at the edge of the lawn, bent over a flowerbed in which she was digging. A boy was standing over her, his back to me and his arms waving about as though he were arguing.

  As I came closer I heard him say, “Why is it the final word? It doesn’t have to be the final word if we talk about it, does it?”

  “There’s nothing left to talk about, Robbie,” said the woman and I knew from her voice that it was Mrs Duff – there was no mistaking t
hat pitch and tone. “Dad and I made it very clear to you what would happen. Here you are, only a couple of weeks into the new term and –”

  She must have heard me then because she abruptly stopped talking and looked around, shading her eyes against the sun.

  “Can I help you?” she called.

  “I’m Kay,” I told her. “I’ve come to help Violet-May with the play.”

  “Then go and find her,” said Mrs Duff. “She’ll be with Rosemary-June in the second garage.”

  I remember she made the word garage sound foreign and posh. But, as I had no idea where the second garage was, I still hesitated. While I waited I thought about how the Duffs had two garages and we didn’t even have a car.

  The boy turned to me then and smiled, “Go round the back of the house and keep left,” he said. He pulled a long face. “You’ll hear them before you see them.”

  I had seen Violet-May’s brother before but it was not until that moment that the bullet struck. Robbie Duff was fourteen at that time. He had Violet-May’s dark-brown eyes but his thick wavy hair was a dark golden colour and sprang up over his left eye in a natural riotous quiff. He was tall and thin and walked with a slight stoop and that year was rarely seen out without a brown corduroy jacket, grey fingerless gloves and a black-and-white oversized PLO scarf around his neck. For whatever reason, in that moment, just a week short of my tenth birthday, I fell hopelessly in love with him.